There are times when existing language is insufficient to express the frustration, incredulity or other emotion felt when reading some of the things that are written or said about climate change. That happened to me today and a new word popped into my head.

Envirallax (noun) – the apparent shift in importance of a report, quotation or publication related to climate science due to the difference in belief or opinion on the causes of climate change between two readers (cf. parallax). Related terms – biased interpretation, confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance.

Whaddya think? Could it catch on?

Happy to have people add other ones they’ve come across (links please) or any they’ve come up with themselves.

Unless another blog reposts this page, or until someone uses the word elsewhere on the web this page is a Googlewhackblatt.

Hmm “The empixellation of meteorology”. I can feel inspiration for a whole series of blog post titles coming on. Why does this always happen to me when I have a deadline for a huge report looming large?

@j ferguson“We do need a word for Envirallax.
Yes – it’s a a definition that needs a word. And the parallax parallel not bad, but I’m not 100% convinced by ‘envirallax’ either, or ‘envirollax’. And yes enviro-llax respects the roots better (like para-llax). Ah well.

@j ferguson – I too liked ‘dissenter’. It does what it says on the tin, without being inflammatory. It’s honest and doesn’t need quote marks. And I’d always be happy to stand up and say “Yes – I’m a dissenter”

There was a discussion over at Bishop Hill about the need for an ‘ology’ to cover the study of catastrophes and apocalypses – especially the imaginary ones created in a never-ending stream by those who have a fear of the dark, change or the consequences of human agency..
I suggested Armaggedonology – it runs off the tongue quite well and has the appropriate feel of satire.

There was also an entertaining set of ‘dooming’ constructions by ‘Mike’ at Climate Etc – doom-head, doom-kopf, doom-butt, doom and doomer (say, Mann and Hansen), and doomed-down science (the Hockey Stick!).

[Reply…except that it’s more doomed-up and dumbed-down. Oh that’d be a great title for a blog post “Climate Scrience – doomed-up & dumbed down” – Verity]

Verity -you’re right. It’s like Tony Blair’s ‘sexing up’ whatever it was that needed selling – ‘doom-up’ is what alarmists do with their imagination to any vague extrapolation. And of course in all subsequent communication about possible events of the future.

You know, more and more I’m thinking we just live in an age of superstition and climate panic has got nothing to do with science, reason or evidence. There’s not much general conflict or war going on and we’re by and large all ridiculously rich [I just read that we get 1300% more food for an hours labour than we did 150 years ago..] so what do we do? We look into the future, it’s dark and unknowable and we then construct an apocalypse with our armaggedonology!!

It’s a coincidence isn’t it that the doom-mongering began precisely when the Wall came down in ’89 and the dark spectre that had kept us all engaged for 50 years evaporated?

I also think it could have crept in as a character in Sheridan’s ‘The Rivals’. The bitter spinster Miss Anthropology..

[Reply – LOL – sister to Mrs Malaprop and given to equal misuse of words, Verity]

[Reply 2 – in fact I can feel a possible ‘literary imagining’ coming on… The Rivals (with apologies to RB Sheridan) set at UEA. Hmm – might need some help with that – along the lines of Gistemp Reloaded or Climate Pygmalion]

When I first saw your word, before I read your definition, I thought of ENvironmental VIRAL(L) anthrAX. (noun) The disease we are all going to die from when the oceans rise/boil and the air overheats and it is wet/dry, cold/hot, snowy/not snowy. Used in a sentence:” I’m a goner, Joe. ( cough, cough) I’ve caught the dreaded Envirallax…”

Or, Envirallax. A copyrighted computer program used only by climate scientists who have no skill in Excel, limited organizational skills and use suspiciously poor scientific methods to extract data.

Welcome Judy F.
I didn’t see your comment before writing the one below. LOL – great (both) alternative definitions of envirallax. Variation on the second one – envirallax (adjective) – we could then say that ‘Phil Jones was envirallax in his use of linear regressions.

Good stuff all! BTW, I need a good definition for another one.‘Farigle’ – I think it could be used for when environmentalists insist on describing the Earth as ‘fragile’ but we really need a proper ‘definition’. Origin here: https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2011/12/25/merry-christmas/#comment-1683 And I’m not meaning to pick on Kevin for his ‘too fast’ backwards typing – genuinely thought it could be a useful word.

I like ‘dissenter’ too.

@Anteros
I take it you remember Beattie (‘BT’) and “Oh he’s got an ‘ology’!” then.

RE: “Doom-mongerer!”
Do you mean “climate doom-mongerer”, which would be on the same line as
WUWT (19.Jan.2012) raising the question: „ NOAA and “climate disasters” – made up words?”.
My comment at WUWT (January 20, 2012 at 1:13 am) says: “The word „disaster“ is not the problem, the word CLIMATE is a disaster”; more at: http://www.whatisclimate.com/.

OK, for those not into bit-twidling: “endian” and both ‘big endian’ and ‘little endian’ are already taken for the property of which end of the machine word has the highest value. Some machines are bigendian and some are little endian. (It was a bit of a religious war for a while with VAX follks on one side and Intel on the other. Motorola joining VAX IIRC)

I think we also need ‘cliflate’ and ‘clifation’ “The inevitable inflation of anything related to climate to impossible levels, be it disaster, budget, self importance, etc.” of which the other words would be specific subsets. As in “He suffered cliflation of confidence until his report was rejected”.

For skeptics, can’t we just say “realitizers” ;-)

And I’m sure that an empixellated researcher will have cliflation of angst leading to embiggened panic as his enviralaxed paper is googlehuffed into importance causing warmologists globally to suffer a panixiation … at least until their grant money is applied as a geldbalm entorporant ;-)

Well, I had a nice long reply 9/10 done and fat fingered the mouse buttons while being inattentive… Guess I’ll just go with a short summary of the ‘not already defined’ words:

Cliflation: The exaggeration of all things climate related (as in running off a cliff of inflation from climate…)

Embiggened is borrowed from a neologism of the past:

1884, C.A. Ward, “New Verbs”, in Notes and Queries: A Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, General Readers, Etc, volume 10, page 135:
Are there not, however, barbarous verbs in all languages? ἀλλ’ ἐμεγάλυνεν αυτοὺς ὁ λαός, but the people magnified them, to make great or embiggen, if we may invent an English parallel as ugly. After all, use is nearly everything.

and deserves to be resurrected, IMHO.

Googlehuff: is to puff up via manipulating rankings on search engines. As in “AlGore demanded that the programmer googlehuff his latest book and assure that both ‘truth’ and ‘doom’ would rank it highly.

Panixiation is that fixation on panic that comes with all things “warmist”, so someone can have themselves panixiated via some minor thing (like a snail found a bit further north than anyone had looked before) and run around claiming a proximate ecosystem collapse…

Geldbalm: To be soothed by the application of money. “AlGore was happy to buy another private jet once his hysteria was dampned by geldbalm.”

And Entorporant: A substance that causes increased torpor, such as too much buffet food at the latest IPCC extravaganza… or the application of so much geldbalm that one just sits in their office and ignores FOIA requests…

Ah – ‘entorporant’ was the only one that really had me stumped. I found ‘cliflation’ a bit of a mouthful (pronunciation), but it is growing on me. ‘Embiggen’ came up on WUWT recently http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/10/embiggening-the-science/#comment-860040 – recent use by Lisa in The Simpsons – and I had seen the Simpsons episode). ‘Panixiation’ is rather brilliant – it really does sound like the tizzy people get themselves into over the most minor thigs.

E.M., where did you think I got Endian? It was important to something I did in the 80s with a forgotten application which might run on PCs or Suns, maybe it was an Oracle issue. It’s good that I can’t remember.

I’m just a bit reluctant to re-use a word that I already use… (Yes, I do us it, as I’ve had to deal with ‘endian’ issues in the FORTRAN inside GIStemp. Some of the code is ‘endian’ and only runs on machines of a non-Intel endian character. That is, the code wants bigendian while the PC is little-endian)

Well… I have a bit of an advantage… I use a large number of “shorthand” notations for my internal thought processes. So I’ve been making my own ‘language bits’ for most of my life… The hard part is keeping them ‘inside only’, as it just flummoxes folks when I’m leakaging wordems….

FWIW, I’ve never read Harry Potter (my Daughter has read them all, though). I was taken to one movie of one of them. But thanks for the compliment ;-)

Twas a gray coldening day, and Hansen was farigling the Arctic Data, empixilated with his handiwork and hopping for more geldbalm to dampen the panixilation he was feeling. But it was not to be. The cliflation of all things warmist extended even to angst, and his doomian acolytes were mid-paroxysm even as his fariggled. He pressed ‘enter’ on the climaking code. Oh, so shadenfreuded was he that even his adjixtered data did not break the spell of his enviralaxed state. But how to googlehuff the results? Email was right out as being foiaed was not to his liking. No, he would have to wait for the next ngovent when a prideal could be jobbed… Later a prvent would glossgeld the whole processes far from macintyreation…

Some of these words have the capacity to insult in the most insidious way. the object is certain that somehow he is being demeaned but can’t quite put his finger on how it’s been done.

E.M. I suspect you keep your alternate languages (those you speak only to yourself) in a parallel register and could default over to that register if you employed them much in public, and maybe have real trouble resetting. It would be fun to bring a couple of your friends up to speed so that you could astonish the other patrons at starbucks, or if ever in chicago, at Jimmy’s woodlawn tap.

Friend who sold Great Books door to door in DC many years ago was very good at alternate language, somewhat like your example and also Sid Caesar’s pseudo-german, more like pseudo-english. He used it when people would keep their screen-doors closed as he was trying to interest them in a presentation in their very own living rooms. He claimed it almost always worked as the door answerer would suspect that perfectly understandable english was being distorted by the screen and that if the door were opened clarity would ensue. And it always worked.

“When trying to express oneself, it’s frankly quite absurd,
To leaf through lengthy lexicons to find the perfect word.
A little spontaneity keeps conversation keen,
You need to find a way to say, precisely what you mean…”